You are the light

“You are the light of the world–like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden”
Matthew 5:14

I just realised that most people aren’t being a light, rather looking at a light- either their computer, phone.. constantly being distracted. Constantly rushing from one thing to another, that they have hardly a time to sit down and be present in the moment and be aware of their surroundings.

If people were more aware of their surroundings, then they would be more of use to others.

I’ll give you an example, and if you have me on instagram…then you may have already heard a snippet of it.

But I had walked out of the house to meet up with a friend for coffee a few days ago. I think it was divine appointment. That day, I had the whole day off, so I would’ve been distracted either on my computer or cleaning up my house. But that particular day, I had last-minute scheduled a catch up. As I was leaving the house to go to the catch up, I could hear a really loud yelling from a guy down the road. It sounded pretty agro, enough for my heart to race and for me to be a little scared to leave my house. But I was running a little late, so I quickly scanned down the road, to see the back of the guy walking away and around the corner.

I rushed into my car and just about to close the door to drive off until I noticed this 30s-40 asian lady sitting down by the gutter/sidewalk. I’ve never noticed her before so I thought maybe she was waiting for an uber as she was holding her phone in her hand. She spoke broken english and looked at me… sort of mumbled and got really flustered when I asked her if she was ok and to repeat what she said again.

I was just about to quickly drive off when I felt my spirit move, and I came out of the car to ask her if everything was ok. Before I knew it, she was running away from me! She was apologising for being in front of the house, and told me to leave her alone.

I tried speaking broken chinese and to my luck, she responded in fluent chinese saying that she just wanted to sit down to calm herself down. Within the short duration of our conversation, 4 young boys came out of their car and said they were looking for her and asked if she was ok. They filled me, saying that the police were on the way, that they were doing a flatpacking job at their house and this woman got locked in the door and yelled at, whilst these boys were working in their home.

Basically, long story short, the woman tried to grab her bags, the guy took them from her, kicked her out of the house and chased her down the road to never come back again. She was so shaken and could barely speak, and you could see she was carrying a domestic abuse victim mentality. She was saying that the guy was “good” and it was her fault.

These amazing boys dropped everything, told the man nicely that they will be ending their job, walked out the house and called the police… which brings us to our current time.

The boys tried to speak to her, the woman kept on running away as she was afraid of getting in trouble by the guy and the police… and fast forward, the police eventually came, the woman was put in the car and taken to safety. The boys had another job after but all 4 of them stayed for the police to come (which took about an hour). They followed up the police by calling numerous times to see if they were coming. Offered the woman water, gave her a charger to charge her phone, chased after her to tell her not to go back to the house, let her stay in their car so she was out of sight and out of the sun.

This is a true example of being a light. They did so much for this woman, who they hardly met.. and judging from their stories, this man was very abusive and obnoxious (as he even started screaming at the police). They ran late to their next job, and even risk their safety to help this woman who from the outside did not know she needed or could get help.

What would you have done? Would you have stayed and help this woman, or just walked away and not even notice someone needing your help because you were distracted on looking down at your phone?

It may be because I’m super observant, but its interesting that so many people in the city who could afford $1 to spare a homeless person, wouldn’t even look or blink at a homeless person on the street. It wouldn’t hurt give the a hug, or strike up a conversation with them. It may take a small 2 minutes out of your day.

And the best excuse is: “You don’t know where that money is going to” “I bet they use their money on drugs” “I bet they deserved it.”

Another real cool story that my friend Christina told me to mention was:
We went to Melbourne for a conference and my Uber driver was super cool. He was speaking about his awesome entrepreneurial business. Mid way through the conversation, I noticed that his voice was just soooooo beautiful. Mesmerizing actually. So I mentioned to him that he should try to do voice over work, because he has a really beautiful tone to his voice. He said that he has been told numerous times to do it, but hasn’t really gotten around to doing it, but said he will promise me that he will chase it up! We exchanged details and parted ways.

Fast forward a day later, he emails me out of the blue to tell me that he really enjoyed our conversation and has kept his promise. He called his friend who so coincidentally opens a voice recording studio and was going to record his demo reel to send to agents and he’ll keep me updated. He thanked me for encouraging him to pursue it and who knows what may come from it!

Anyway, I hope I know it was a lot of story time, but I thought it may encourage you to step away from the light (ie. phones, computers) and BE the light.

You don’t know what YOU can do to impact another person positively.

Be present in your surroundings.
Compliment somebody.
Encourage them.
Speak life into them.
Give to those who need help.
Strike up a conversation with a random person. They all have interesting and amazing stories.
Be open to knowing more about others.